


I Need A Hero

by Ryan_magickink_Foxheart



Category: Tales from Verania - T.J. Klune
Genre: Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fireman AU - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 10:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryan_magickink_Foxheart/pseuds/Ryan_magickink_Foxheart
Summary: When Sam meets fireman Ryan Foxheart as part of a car crash reenactment he was roped into he never thought he'd see him again. That is until he wakes up to find his room filling with smoke and a certain fireman at his window...





	I Need A Hero

**Author's Note:**

> A fireman AU I wrote a while ago for a couple of people on the TfV discord server, enjoy!

I don’t really know what I’d got myself into, to be honest. My aunts, Pat and Leslie, had persuaded me to take part in some educational performance thing at the school they worked at. They’d promised I’d regret it for the rest of my life for reasons they refused to tell me, so I ended up agreeing.

That’s what lead me to be standing outside a school at nine in the morning on a cold March morning. About to be killed in a car crash by a certain bratty teenage girl. She was a few years younger than me and was in the drama class I helped in when I was in my final year here. We fought endlessly. It’s like we were destined to hate each other; soulmates, but hating each other instead of loving each other if that was a thing. Soul-rivals maybe?

“I hope you’ve said your goodbyes, it won’t be long now until I get to kill you,” Tina said from behind me. I could just tell she’d have an ugly grin on her face for the next month.

“If you killing me means I never have to see you again, I’m more than fine with that. You have to pretend you care I’m dead though, so I think the joke’s on you here,” I snapped back.

“If anyone here knows about pretending to care it’s you. After all, it’s not like you can feel any actual emotions without risking a massive brain haemorrhage.”

“Oh, I’ve had a quite a few of those already. The doctors thought it was odd how irregularly they were occurring, but then I realised they happened whenever I saw your face.”

“Sorry to interrupt whatever kind of weird flirting is going on here, but we should get on with the demonstration,” one fireman said as he approached us.

Tina and I turned to glare at the man, “We are not flirting!”

“Okay, okay, whatever you say,” he said as he stepped back, his hands raised defensively. Something about his attitude made me think he didn’t quite believe us. That would have to change.

“I think you’ll find Tina’s so repugnant she’s completely put me off women, I’m strictly dickly.”

“Did you really just say strictly dickly,” he deadpanned.

I crossed my arms, “Yes, and I’m owning it.”

We stood for a few more moments, a comfortable silence passing over us. I took the opportunity to take in his strong, clean-shaven jaw and deep green eyes. I would definitely imagine him dashing in heroically to save me from a burning building once I got home.

“If you two are quite finished staring lovingly into each other’s eyes, can we get on with this?” Tina said with a bitchy smile on her face.

I could feel myself blush furiously as the fireman averted his gaze and coughed nervously.

“We weren’t—We’re not—” I glared Tina.

She crossed her arms and stared right back at me. Bitch.

“Right um yeah,” Ryan said as he shook his head, “You guys get in the car, we’ll get the rest of our gear set up, then we’ll get on with this shit.”

I wouldn’t stand for that, “Language!” I admonished.

He turned to look at me with a puzzled expression, “What?”

“You’re a firefighter, you save people. You have to be noble and pure and shit, that means no swearing. Think of the children who look up to you when you get their cat down from a tree!”

“You know we don’t actually do that right?”

“Yes you do, but that’s not the point. Stop trying to distract me.”

“I wasn—”

“Yes, you were. Now promise me, no swearing.”

“If it means you’ll get in the car so we can get on with this then sure, I won’t swear.”

I turn away from him and headed towards the car, only to realise I was being closely followed by my nameless fireman friend. I stopped suddenly as I was walking in an attempt to see whether or not he was actually following me. When he crashed straight into the back of me I knew he was.

I turned as I stepped away from him, “Are you stalking me now or something?” I said.

“No, I’ve got to strip—”

“You’ve got to what?”

His face went about as red as the fire engine he arrived in, “No. Oh my god no. I’ve got to strip the car of the door seals and crack the front and back windshields ready for when we cut the top off the car.”

“Right,” I said, “So I probably shouldn’t get in the car yet then?”

“No, you probably shouldn’t. Come on, you can watch me strip.” He said with a wink as he headed off towards the car.

“Sweet molasses,” I muttered. What I wouldn’t give to see him strip his uniform off right now.

I was snapped out of my trance-like state when the nameless fireman called over and told me I wouldn’t get to see him stripping if I wasn’t quick. Needless to say, I was quick. He laughed at how quick I was like an asshole.

“You know you still haven’t told me your name,” I said.

Without turning away from the car he said, “Ryan. Ryan Foxheart. What’s yours?”

“Sam Foxheart.” He stopped what he was doing and turned to look at me, “Haversford! Sam Haversford,” it was my turn for my face to turn bright red.

He laughed at me. Again.

“Are you always like this?” he asked

“Yes, he is,” Pat called over.

I looked over to see Pat was smirking at me and Leslie was trying to contain a laugh.

“Unbelievable,” I said as I shook my head. “I wish Gary and Tiggy were here, they’d stick up for me.”

Pat raised an eyebrow at me.

“Okay, Gary definitely wouldn’t,” I admitted. “Tiggy probably would.”

The accusatory eyebrow stayed raised.

“Fine! Have it your way. Tiggy doesn’t like lying so he wouldn’t either.”

The eyebrow lowered.

Maybe I was like that all the time around attractive men, maybe I wasn’t. I guess we’ll never know. It’ll remain a mystery.

“Sam, if you’re finished distracting our teachers, the firemen are ready for me to kill you,” Tina grinned.

She was too excited about this. WAY too excited.

***

It was cold in the car. I thought I’d be okay, but that was before I realised I’d be sitting still for so long. Tina said I deserved it for existing in general. I told her I was probably only cold because the black hole where her heart should be was sucking in all the heat. She told me to hurry up and die before she turned away to make her hair look messier in the wing mirror.

Once Leslie finished telling the students what would happen for the day, she turned and gave Pat a nod so she could tell the firemen we were ready to start. That was also our cue to start acting as if we were driving so Tina could ‘crash’ and kill me.

The acting didn’t take too long. As I was ‘playing dead’ I could hear Tina panicking around me, she pretended to be upset that I was dead, called the emergency services, then decided to leave so she didn’t get caught when she heard to sirens come around the corner.

Whilst the police chased after Tina the firemen came over to the car to cut me out of it. Ryan placed a helmet on my head and a blanket over me so I would be protected from any shattered glass or parts of the roof that accidentally hit me. I couldn’t see much through the blanket, so the only sign anything was happening around me were the sounds of metal being cut through and glass being smashed.

After what probably felt like longer than it was, I felt a rush of cold air as the roof of the car was lifted off. Ryan came over and took the blanket and helmet off, then said they would put me onto a spine board so he could pretend to do CPR. I wasn’t surprised a few moments later when my seat tipped back and strong hands under my arms pulled me up onto the board. I was carried over towards the crowd of students and set down a little way in front of them, so they’d all be able to get a good view of the last part of the demonstration.

Ryan started with chest compressions soon after they set me down. He kept pretending to check my breathing after the compressions and incorporated the rescue breathing in with the chest compressions. I had to stop myself from reaching up and pulling his face all the way down the first couple of times he did them. That feeling quickly evolved into trying not to burst out laughing when he started making stupid noises when he was pretending to give me mouth-to-mouth.

After a few minutes, he stopped and pronounced me dead. With the help with another one fireman he transferred me off the spine board and into a body bag, then picked me up by either end of the bag and carried me off away so I could get out of the bag without being seen.

***

All of a sudden I felt the hard ground under my back again, and I realised I must’ve been put down behind the fire engine. As the bag was unzipped, the light that flooded in through the open zip temporarily blinded me. As my eyes adjusted to their sudden assault, it surprised me to see the outline of a hand come into view in the centre of my vision.

“I can get myself up you know,” I batted the hand away.

“Humour me,” Ryan’s soft voice said from just beyond the extended hand.

“Fine,” I rolled my eyes before I reached up and took the offered hand.

One sharp pull later and I found myself pressed against the chest of one rather muscular fireman.

“Thanks,” I said as I tried to look anywhere but his face.

Ryan let me go and reached to the band holding his hair in a bun. He pulled it back away from his head as he pulled his hair free. Once the band was off, his slipped it on his wrist before he shook his head and ran his hands through his dirty blond hair in an effort to make it less messy.

Oh, he can go fuck himself. Actually, that’d be kind of hot, but that’s beside the point.

“Holy balls.” Maybe I was drooling slightly, maybe I wasn’t.

“You okay there Sam?” he smirked at me.

“Yes, I’m fine. More than fine actually,” I said, slightly dazed. Once I’d snapped out of my trance-like state I said, “You know you can just do that in public like that, you might end up giving some poor old lady a heart attack.”

“I think it was a calculated risk,” his smirk still plastered on his face.

“I hate you so much,” I couldn’t deal with him anymore. I turned and walked away from him towards my car.

“No you don’t,” he called after me.

*****

**_Next week…_ **

I was in a room I didn’t recognise. I looked around and saw it was mostly empty, the only colour in the plain room being the green curtains.

It was also hot. Unusually hot.

I went over to the door and reached out for the handle, only to find an intense heat radiated off it, and the door in general, as I got closer.

I decided it was probably best to get away from the door if whatever was on the other side was causing to get that hot. I moved towards the window to see if I could climb out, only to have fire spring up in front of me. I backed away from the fire beneath the window as well as the door where the thick smoke now poured into the room from underneath.

The door suddenly burst open and I could see Ryan on the other side, he was wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and his hair was loose, it tumbled down to his broad shoulders with a slight wave to it. My vision swam as I danced on the edge of consciousness, but I could vaguely make out him making his way around the fire towards me.

Once he reached me I collapsed against his chest, thick biceps wrapped around me as he pulled me up against him in a comforting embrace.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re safe now,” he whispered against my ear.

We stayed in the embrace for what felt like hours. The fire raged around us on all sides but never got any closer.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He pulled out of the embrace and put one hand around my back and the other under my knees and swept me up bridal style before he made his way to the open door. As he walked the fire seemed to part around him as he carried me down the stairs and out of the house to safety.

Once we were a safe distance from the house, he set me down but didn’t let me move too far away from him.

“Thanks for saving me,” I smiled at him.

“No problem Sam,” He smiled back at me. “There is one more thing before you go.”

“Oh?”

He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulled me up against him then dipped me over, sort of like you sometimes see at the end of a dance.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Kissing you.”

He leaned down further, his lips approached mine in what felt like slow motion. He got lower and lower, closer and closer until —

I woke up in bed and realised it’d all been a dream.

***

“I had a dream about him again last night,” I said to Gary over coffee the next morning.

“This must've been one sexy fireman to keep this dreaming going all week,” he smirked at me.

“He is so dreamy,” I let out a wistful sigh, “That pun was intended by the way.”

“So when do I get to meet him?” Gary questioned.

“What? Why would you get to meet him?”

“Because you said he is? As in he IS dreamy, as in you’re still seeing him? Duh.”

“Oh no. No, no, no, fuck no. I embarrassed myself too much to EVER see him again.” I took a large sip of my coffee. “Besides, it’s not like I got his number or anything. What do you think he did, say ‘Hey I’ve just cut you out a car whilst you pretended to be dead after meeting you for the first time ever, by the way here’s my number’? No one does that Gary. No one.”

“That’s how Kevin and I met. Granted it was after he’d arrested me for drunk driving when I was 19, but it’s basically the same.”

“Gary, we both know you can’t drive. When are you going to tell us how the two of you actually met?” I asked.

“Sorry, it’s a national secret. If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

I rolled my eyes at him, “Yeah, sure Gary. Don’t tell me then.”

We heard a knock on the door, and to my surprise, Gary squealed and jumped up to answer it. From where I sat I could just about see him sign for a package I didn’t know he’d ordered. He’d normally tell me if he was expecting something in case he wasn’t in when it arrived, but clearly, this was important enough to him that he made sure he was in when it arrived. When he ran off to open the package, I knew our coffee session was over and I decided to go upstairs and have a nap like any normal person does mid-morning.

***

When I woke up from my nap, the fire alarm greeted me, blaring loudly outside my door. I rolled my eyes as I pulled a t-shirt and jeans on and went to the door. Gary probably tried to make toast and burnt it again. That happened quite often, especially when he got drunk. It’s not like he’s even a bad cook. He can cook really well, just can’t make toast to save his life for some reason.

I opened the door to see the ceiling covered in a thick layer of smoke that looked to be coming from somewhere downstairs. I ran back to my room to get my phone and shut the door behind me to keep the smoke out for as long as I could. Moments later, after I’d unlocked my phone and was about to call the fire brigade, I heard a knock on the window. I shoved my phone in my back pocket and went over, only to see a fireman who was making a gesture that could only mean he wanted me to open it, which I did. He climbed into the room and pulled the visor on his helmet up so I could see his face.

“Ryan?” I said, slightly surprised he was the one out of all the firemen that’d come to get me out of here.

“Not the best of circumstances to be seeing you again Sam,” he said with a somewhat charming smile on his face. “Now you take a seat and I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of here.”

“Whatever you say,” I said as I sat down on the bed to watch whatever heroics were about to happen.

Ryan made his way over to the door and tried to open it, only to find it was stuck. He tried to rattle it to loosen it then tried to open it again with the same result as the first time he tried. He tried kicking it open next. After he moved back slightly and braced himself he kicked the door just below the handle. When that didn’t seem to work he tried to kick it above the handle as well.

After a couple more tries he came over and sat beside me on the bed.

“What the fuck is up with that door?!” Ryan turned to me for an answer, then sighed when he saw I had my eyebrows raised. “What the fudge is up with that door?”

“Better,” I said as I made my way over to the door.

I pushed the handle up slightly to take the weight of the door off the bottom hinge and then gave said hinge a good kick. I let go of the handle and opened the door with no trouble at all.

“I’ve lived here for ages, I know how to open this door when it gets stuck. Now come on, you probably fucked up your foot trying to kick it open from the wrong side, and the building is kind of on fire, let’s get out of here.”

I went back over to where he sat on the bed and extended my hand to him so I could help him stand up. I pulled him to his feet and put an arm around his waist and he put his arm over my shoulders to support him.

“This is so not how I dreamt this going,” I muttered on our way out of the room.

“Not the fireman fantasy you’ve been dreaming about since last week then?” he deadpanned.

I froze on the spot, “How do you know about that?”

“How do you think?”

That’s when it hit me, “How much did Gary tell you?”

“Just that you’d been dreaming about me. Once we’re out of here, you should tell me about them,” he winked.

“If I must,” I groaned.

***

We made it out of the house safely but were immediately separated and taken over to an ambulance so they could check us over. They checked my breathing to see if I had any signs of smoke inhalation; I didn’t, but they told me if I had any trouble breathing over the next few days I should go straight to the hospital. I assured them I would be straight there before they let me leave so I could talk to Gary.

I looked around until I spotted Gary walking away from one of the firemen.

“Gary,” I said when I reached him.

“Yes Sam?” he said innocently.

“How the hell did you manage to burn our house down, and almost me with it?”

“I might have ordered that vibrator from that sketchy website you and Tiggy told me not to trust.” I waited for him to continue. “That’s what that package that arrived today was. I wanted to try it out, so I plugged it in by the sofa so I could charge it, then went out to the shop to get some more cranberry juice because we were out and I wanted a vodka cranberry. When I got back, I opened the door and saw the sofa, and most of the furniture in that room, was on fire, so I ran back outside and called the emergency services.”

“Why am I not surprised? Of course, you bought an ultra-powerful vibrator that you were told not to buy and almost set me on fire with it,” I sighed. I don’t know how I dealt with Gary’s shenanigans sometimes.

After a few minutes, Gary wandered off, said something about going to the corner shop to get us more vodka now the fire had destroyed his supply. He was probably right, I would need alcohol after this was over.

“Hey,“ Ryan said as he hopped over on a pair of crutches.

“Hey. I see they gave you crutches,” I said.

“Yeah, just to take a bit of the strain off it, after the whole door thing.”

“You mean after I saved your ass.”

“Yes, after you saved my ass, Sam. So what happened in these dreams you said you’d tell me about?”

“Oh. Those. I can only really remember one of them.” When he didn’t respond I assumed that meant I should tell him about it. “Well I was in some room I didn’t recognise, it was boiling. I went to open the door, but the handle was too hot to touch. I moved back from the door and suddenly the room was filling with smoke and there was a fire in the room, blocking the windows and getting closer to me. I backed up to the wall and got close to the ground then you burst through the door in just a t-shirt and jeans. You pulled me against your chest and comforted me as the fire surrounded us. Then you picked me up, bridal style, and carried me out of the building as the fire parted around you. Once we got out you put me down and almost kissed me before I woke up.”

“That’s so not realistic,” he chuckled.

“I know, I know. It was a dream, of course it wasn’t.”

A silence settled between us as neither of us was sure how to carry in the conversation.

“There is one part of it that could be plausible though,” he said after a couple of minutes.

“What’s that?” I asked him.

He took a deep breath but didn’t answer. He spent a few seconds just looking into my eyes, then muttered something I couldn’t quite hear to himself and stepped closer to me. Before I knew what was happening Ryan’s lips were pressed against mine, and my hands were tangled in his soft locks.

It was over almost as quickly as it had begun. “The part where you kissed by the hot fireman,” he said after he pulled away.

I was stunned silent. This was so much better than the dream. I should get trapped in burning buildings more often. Okay maybe not, but I should definitely have dreams that lead to being kissed more often.

Gary came over and stared at the two of us with an eyebrow raised; he’d evidently seen the kiss on his way back from the corner shop. “Don’t forget to breathe Sam,” he said.

I took a breath in.

“And out,” he prompted after I apparently forgot that part.

I let the breath out.

“You’ve clearly broken him, so I’ll have to do the talking for him,” Gary said to Ryan. “Mr Sexy Fireman thank you so much for kissing me. Would you mind giving me your number so I can call you so we can go on a date which will most likely not end in sex because I’m a prude.”

Gary reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, unlocked it, and handed it to Ryan so he could give me his number. He sent himself a text whilst he had it so he’d have my number as well, then held it out for me to take.

“Yes, what he said. A date. With you.” I drawled as my brain caught up with everything that just happened.

He looked at me with an amused look on his face as Gary rolled his eyes and took the phone from his hand so he could put it back in my pocket for me.

“And it will end in sex because I am so not a prude,” I said to Gary.

“I think I might have some say in that,” Ryan interjected.

“Nope. It’s been decided.”

“Okay, whatever you want Sam.” He glanced at the crowd of firemen who were watching the conversation from beside the truck. He looked back at me and said, “I better get going, I’ve got to get back to the station. Call me?”

“I’ll call you,” I said, a satisfied smile on my face.

Seems like I got my fireman fantasy after all.


End file.
